Youth crime has been touted as a significant problem across NSW, as well as locally, and has led to several meetings being held in Ballina earlier this year and the introduction of tougher youth bail laws across the state.
While it is understandable that people want to feel safe, it is essential that they understand the underlying issues and effective responses to youth crime. Poverty, homelessness, lack of access to supportive education, undiagnosed or un-managed mental health and learning challenges, domestic violence and unstable home life, as well as drug and alcohol dependence are among basic issues faced by many young people.
This has led to approximately 45,850 children and young people being homeless in Australia on any given night according to the 2021 Census.
Diversionary programs successful
As Detective Chief Inspector Matt Kehoe, Officer in charge of Byron Bay Police Station told The Echo, ‘Diversionary programs are absolutely successful with young people who are identified early and it stops them going down the slippery slope of the youth criminal justice system.
Once they are in the youth justice system you see them repeat offend over and over. But if we can find a positive way to engage them through sports, art, or employment it breaks that cycle.’
Yet last week a youth mentoring program that supported Indigenous youth across the Northern Rivers including Kyogle, Casino, and Lismore, cancelled their face-to-face mentoring program without notice to the young people accessing the program or their parents or guardians.
An increase in community unrest
‘With at-risk children wandering the streets together, feeling abandoned and with nothing to do, you can guarantee an increase in community unrest,’ said one of their parents who contacted The Echo.
As former magistrate and Dean of Law at SCU David Heilpern has made clear, there are no quick answers but we need to start with early intervention, support for families in crisis, more domestic violence support programs, innovative health and education inclusion, and First Nations-led programs within community.
Or as one friend who has been through the system recently said, ‘you need to have early intervention for 13 to 18 year-olds. You need people who have been through the system, and who understand what they have, and are experiencing. I wouldn’t have listened to anyone else when I was their age.’
Tough on crime
It costs around $1,000,000 a year to keep a young person in juvenile detention. Rather than being ‘tough on crime’ we need to spend that money addressing basic issues of housing, education, mentoring and evidence-based responses to youth crime rather than stripping away their support systems without notice as recently happened here to young people and their families in Northern NSW.
Aslan Shand, editor
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